How to Build a Habit and Make it Stick in 4 Steps
The regular repetition of the following 4 steps, outlined in James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, is how to build a habit and make it stick.
1. Cue
The cue is anything that triggers your brain to initiate a habit. Cues can be of various forms:
Your cue should be regular, specific and obvious to avoid ambiguity (e.g. at a certain time of day), and easily actionable (e.g. do not pick a cue of 5.30 pm if you know you will not be able to do the habit until 6 pm).
So examples of a cue you could pick for your new habit are:
- At 6.30 am I will…
- After I eat breakfast I will …
- After I come back from my morning walk I will …
The more often you repeat a habit (i.e. repeat the cue), the faster it will become a habit.
2. Craving
After the cue is perceived, the craving is the conscious or subconscious desire for change that generates some motivation to propel you to act. It is important to note that the craving is for the change the habit delivers, not the habit itself. For example,
- A clean mouth is craved, not the act of brushing teeth.
- Being entertained is craved, not the act of watching a movie or show.
Define your craving by asking yourself:
- “Why do I want to make this a habit?”
- “What will happen if I don’t do it for 6/12/18 months?”
The greater and scarier the cost of inaction the better. A good way of making these answers easy to remember is by combining all of them into a 1–3 sentence mission statement.
An example of your craving could be:
I want to regularly exercise. If I do not, my physical and mental health will deteriorate. I do not want to drastically reduce my life span and be at high risk of many diseases and illnesses. If I do not make time for my health, I will be forced to make time for sickness instead.
- You (probably)
Recite your craving back to yourself after the cue (if it does not happen subconsciously yet) to generate that sweet motivation. Alternatively, I suggest printing this out and permanently putting it somewhere you will frequently see it like on the wall in front of your home computer. After the cue, you will be visually reminded of your craving.
3. Response
The motivation generated from the craving induces the response. The response is the act of actually doing the habit. To ensure the habit is done, at the start make the act so small and easy that barely any motivation is required to start and it is practically impossible to fail.
For example,
- For a daily workout, start with a 5-minute walk.
- For a daily study session, stat with reading one page or watching one short video.
- For a daily side-project coding session, start by setting up the development environment and coding for 5 minutes.
You should then gradually increase the response with each subsequent iteration. If you were to increase the size or difficulty of a task by 1% each day…
By the end of one year, you would have a 37x improvement.
4. Reward
The reward is the satisfaction of your craving that occurs during and/or after the completion of the act.
For example, after 20 to 30 minutes of intense aerobic exercise, endorphins are released resulting in a mood and energy boost for 2–3 hours and a mild buzz for up to 24 hours. This satisfies a craving for better physical and mental health (and helps you sleep better too).
The satisfaction of the craving, i.e. reward, then becomes associated with the cue making the habit more likely to repeat on the next cue.
Research shows that the repetition of the cue > craving > response > reward loop is ultimately what creates habits.
Bonus Tips to Build the Habit and Make it Stick
1. Break up big habits
Incrementally increasing habits will inevitably result in dramatic increases after a while. When habit sizes get unmanageable, break them down into smaller manageable chunks. For example, instead of doing a habit a few hours straight, do it for an hour in the morning and evening.
2. Don’t skip twice!
Research shows that it can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days for people to form a new habit. The researchers discovered that “missing one opportunity to perform the behaviour did not materially affect the habit formation process.” So if you have an off day, that’s fine. Just make sure you don’t skip twice.
3. Make the habit part of your identity.
In other words, identify as someone you want to be that does that habit. For example,
“I am a physically active person who regularly runs.”
— You (probably)
When failure happens, and it will, it will not matter because your new identity motivates you to succeed at the next opportunity. Why do runners regular run when there is no marathon to train for or no goal amount of weight they want to lose? It is because they consciously or subconsciously identify as physically active people that run regularly.
4. Tell Everyone About Your New Identity
Research shows that people will go out of their way to behave consistently with their decisions. If you start a new habit and tell no one, inconsistency might result in some guilt. However, if a decision or promise is made publicly, being inconsistent to others can be perceived as incompetence, deception and irrationality.
Through the pressure to avoid negative public perception, telling others increases the likelihood of habit follow-through.
5. Recruit some friends
The stakes are even higher if you involve others in a new habit (e.g. regularly exercise together, study together, work on a side-project together). It is more fun as you won’t get lonely, more creative as you can bounce ideas off of each other, and more inspiring as you can motivate and help each other along the way.
Any inconsistency here can generate reactions of disappointment, confusion, and anger from others. Hence, in a bid to avoid negative stress in relationships, mutual commitment increase the likelihood everyone involved will follow through.
6. Join a Community
Take advantage of social proof where people automatically reference the behaviour of others to guide their own behaviour. Joining a community that normally practices your desired habit encourages consistency and builds social connections along the way. Look for communities online in places like Facebook Groups, subreddits on Reddit, and LinkedIn Groups. Websites like meetup.com are something I use to find in-person communities.
Takeaways
“Depending on what they are, our habits will either make us or break us. We become what we repeatedly do.”
— Sean R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People
Use this post as your guide to how to build a habit and make it stick.
What new habit do you want to build?
What will your cue and craving be?
Which of the bonus tips can you do to make the habit stick?
Original post published at anxiouswebdev.com on September 13, 2020.
